Published in:
01-01-2017 | Editorial
Hot-Spotters Aren’t “The Problem”...But They Are Emblematic of the Failure of U.S. Healthcare
Authors:
Hemal K. Kanzaria, MD MSc, Jerome R. Hoffman, MA MD
Published in:
Journal of General Internal Medicine
|
Issue 1/2017
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Excerpt
In his very influential article in the
New Yorker, Atul Gawande shined a bright light on the small group of neediest patients who access the healthcare system extremely frequently.
1 These “frequent users” comprised only 1 % of the population in Camden, New Jersey, but accounted for about a third of all medical costs. Even so, their health outcomes were notoriously poor, implying that the system could do a far better job of taking care of them. One of the ways to help accomplish this, Gawande suggested, was through care management and coordination, something that is, unfortunately, generally inadequate in American medicine, and likely even less available for this most vulnerable group of patients. …
